My self-portraits reveal how these cultural influences shape my identity, as enacted through my body, and how I perceive my identity in a cross-cultural context. The materiality and form of my art, using my own body, emphasise the complexities of subjectivity, situating my personal narrative within the intersection of gender and cultural identity.
My body acts as a palimpsest, constantly rewritten with images and text that I project onto it, reflecting my experiences as a Brazilian contemporary artist living in Western Australia. Ana Mendieta’s art, which embeds her body with the landscapes of North and South America, informs my exploration as a woman navigating the cultural divide between Brazil and Western Australia, living on the boundaries of two continents.
Through my art, I engage with the themes of cultural identity and feminism by employing colour, contour, form, and gesture to investigate the cultural aspects inherent to both Brazil and Australia. My self-portraits reveal how these cultural influences shape my identity, as enacted through my body, and how I perceive my identity in a cross-cultural context. The materiality and form of my art, using my own body, emphasise the complexities of subjectivity, situating my personal narrative within the intersection of gender and cultural identity.
Within this series, I use water as a visual metaphor to evoke the notion of the diasporic movement of people. Water becomes an integral element in my practice; its materiality serving as a visual language to express my diasporic experience.
My series of self-portraits, emerging from my experiences as a Brazilian woman in Western Australia, explores the intersection of gender and cultural identity. Through my photographs, I delve into the recontextualisation of my identity, examining the cultural differences and similarities between Brazil and Australia. This exploration contributes to the broader discussion of intersectionality between culture, gender, and place. In this way, I approach my body as a palimpsest to explore how I am perceived as a Latin American woman in the territory I inhabit. As I shift between territories, I identify with the space between cultural boundaries, which puts my identity in transit. In this space, my body becomes a territory where I legitimise my complex mix of positionalities.
Patricia Amorim holds a Fine Arts degree from Centro Universitário de Belas Artes de São Paulo and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Northampton, UK. Her work has been exhibited globally, including the UK, China, Brazil, and Australia. She’s a PhD candidate at Edith Cowan University, holding the ECU Higher Degree Research Program Scholarship.
Main image: Figure 1: Patricia Amorim (2023), Palimpsest Series I, digital photograph (Cotton Rag Printing), 33.1 x 46.8 cm.